


The Many Flaws of Tony Stark

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, F/M, Pepper fixes it, maybe triggers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 13:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14106084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: She's just trying to get him to sign the damn patent form."I don't?"  He blinks at her, points from the folder in her hand to the table, and then snaps his fingers in her general direction.  "I don't like being handed things."Pepper stares at him for a moment, then moves to the desk and waits for him to come to her.Rich people, she thinks, but even then she knows that that's not really the problem.





	The Many Flaws of Tony Stark

She's just trying to get him to sign the damn patent form. 

"I don't." He blinks at her, points form the folder to the desk and then snaps his fingers in her general direction.  "I don't like being handed things."

Pepper stares at him for a moment, hand still outstretched, waiting to see if it was a joke and he would take it.  Tony doesn't, though, just continues to look more tense and uncomfortable as the seconds stretch by, looking for all the world like he was going to stand there for all eternity instead of taking the papers.

 _Idiotic,_ she thinks, as she walks around the thing he was working on and over to the desk without breaking eye contact, trying to let him know that she was going to put up with it, but only because he pays her good money to do so.   _This is why you had to fire everyone who came before me._

She slams the papers down on the table with a huff, flipping through the pages to the page he has to sign, and then waits.  For a moment, she feels bad for giving him a hard time over something so small, but really, who can't even take a folder from someone?

"Thanks."  He looks embarrassed, which is strange, because she's never seen him look embarrassed before.  Then, in a mutter so garbled that she can barely understand it, he adds, "Sorry."

"Not a problem, Mr. Stark."  She scoops up the papers and tries for a smile, leaving him sitting there and staring after her.  "I live to serve."

 _Rich people,_ she thinks on the way out, but even then she must have known that wasn't the reason.

 

 

 

 

It's the first time she starts to notice that there was something  _off_ about Tony Stark, but when she starts paying attention, Pepper realizes that it was obvious for anyone who cared to look.

(Okay, not like, the very first thing she noticed, because that might have gone to the not sleeping and the excessive drinking and the endless string of women that she keeps finding in his bedroom, but you get the idea.)

"Pepper."  She's filling out paperwork for him about some charity event Stark Industries was sponsoring when he bursts into the area that they had designated as her office.  His sudden appearance scares her so bad that she slops coffee down her shirt, and he winces in an apology.  "Listen -I, sorry about the shirt I'll pay for the dry cleaning- I need you to get rid of that girl."

"What?"  She was used to this, honestly, but it normally came in the form of a voicemail when she walked in the first day, as in, hey I had a thing with this girl but I had to leave early so can you show her out sort of deal, not as in  _I was having a perfectly good time but now I'm freaking out._ "Did she do something?"

"No, it's just that."  He grinded his knuckles down on the desk so hard she could hear them pop, and she would have done anything to make that stop.  "She's eating."

"And that's a problem because?"  Pepper knows he's got some problems.  She knows that his brain works differently than other peoples, that sometimes he has to climb a mountain where other people just get to take a stroll in the park to make it through an easy conversation.  She tries to never show surprise about his requests, and she likes to think that she's patient.  But its different when he's complaining about a girl eating a breakfast he made her.

"It's not, I know, it's just, I can hear it?"   She wasn't sure if he was asking her or just not wanting to say it, but he was twitching in a way that signaled a working binge if she didn't stop it in its tracks.  (Stop was the wrong word.  You could delay, but it always comes.)  "And I'm trying to do work before we go out for the day, but I can't, because I can just.... hear her chewing and swallowing and it's not gross or anything, but I can hear it and there's no music to cover it up, and I'm getting angry at her  _for eating._ You see why this is a problem?"  He comes around the back of her chair and starts to actually push her down the hallway, even though Pepper tries to hang onto the table.  "So I need you to go in there and distract her, and then text me when she's done eating so I don't ruin this."  She's staring at him, and he's staring back at her with wide, pleading puppy eyes.  "Please help me?"

He's about to offer to give her a raise, or a car, and Pepper doesn't want to hear that because she just had a talk with him last night about not throwing money at her when he needs a favor.  

"Alright."  She wanted to ask him if this was an all the time thing, if it was eating or just all the little noises like the rustle of clothes and the hum of the lights, and if so is that what the music is about?  Or if it really was just eating, then how often had he stayed in the same room with her, disgust and anger boiling right under the surface as he tries to squish it down because he knows it's crazy.  Not handing him things was something she could deal with.  Not making noise?  Not so much.  "I'll handle it."

Pepper handles everything, now.  The last thing she sees of Tony is him raising his hands in a thank you before turning and running back down to the workshop, where he's pretending to work on some important invention.

"Hey."  Pepper forces herself to smile, and finds that it isn't hard.  This girl, at least, looks normal, and has no problem acting perfectly friendly.  She's got an easy smile and a pretty face, even if she doesn't look like the models that Tony normally brings home.  "I'm Pepper, Mr. Stark's assistant.  He warned you that I might find you in here."

The girl got up to shake her hand.  They were working hands, and when Pepper takes a glance at the key chain resting on the counter, she sees that she's a nurse.  "Alice."  She doesn't seem upset about finding another woman in the house.  "Tony said that I might run into you if I got up before him." A pause.  "He spoke very highly of you."

Pepper pauses for a moment, thrown off guard, because whatever she thought Tony's late night conversation included, she did not think he would be taking the time to compliment her.  "Yeah, well, he's a great boss."  Then, remembering why she was here, she added.  "I had to pull him away to take a phone call from some Chinese man.  I don't speak mandarin."  Pepper plucks at the shirt, which was stained with coffee and too hot on her skin.  "Thought I'd take the time to clean this off."

"Oh, I hate when that happens."  Alice said, perfectly amiable, and the discussion of laundry carries them all the way through breakfast, at which point Tony mysteriously reappears, the Chinese crisis taken care of.

 

 

 

She gets a call at three AM and it really pisses her off this time, because she took the day off because she was sick and she would have thought Tony would have respected that.

Pepper's about to give the bartender an earful, to tell him that this time there was no way she was going to take off into the cold and slightly dangerous city just to rescue Tony Stark, and that if he would be so kind to look through the contact list, he would find a man named Happy that is perfectly capable of picking him up.

Only it isn't a bartender.

"Pepper?"  It's Tony, his voice wrecked and raw, like he had swallowed glass.  Or maybe like he had been crying.  "You there?"

"Yeah, Tony."  She was already out of bed, even though every muscle in her body was aching and her head was spinning.  "Are you alright?  Where are you?"

Pepper's used to problems she can fix.  TO being on the move, to checking off boxes and getting things done.  She's good at it.  She doesn't know how to help when it's just Tony on the other end of the line with his raw voice and shaky breathing, clearly upset.  "I'm at home. In the tower.  Jarvis says I'm okay."  He didn't sound alright.  He sounded like he wasn't sure of anything.  "And I know you're sick, and this is awful, I'm sorry."

He was going to hang up.  She wasn't going to let that happen.  "Tony.  It's alright."  She didn't feel sick anymore, anyways.  "What do you need?"

"Will you just talk to me, or read out loud to me, or something?"  He took another long, shaky breath.  "I just need to hear your voice."

For once in her life, Pepper didn't have a thing to say to him, so she searched around the nightstand for the book she was reading.  It was a trashy romance novel, the kind you get at the store for a dollar and really only buy because of the man on the cover.  She didn't really like the idea of Tony knowing that she reads them, but she doesn't think he's going to be paying attention to the story.

"Alright."  She cleared her throat, wondering why he has to do this on the day she has strep throat, of all times.  "Chapter one..."

 

 

 

Pepper gets a fruit basket out of that one.

She wishes it was chocolate.

 

 

 

Pepper never had to be afraid of Tony.  And she'd never really been afraid for him either, because despite his slight self destructive tendencies, he's never put himself or anyone else in immediate danger, but then she walks into work and has Jarvis tell her that if she wants to find him, Mr. Stark was on the roof.

She still wasn't worried, because it just seemed like a Tony sort of thing to do.  Like, yes, I am a billionaire, I have a tower, I will now stand at the top of this tower and check out the great view. Ta-da, all is well.

But that wasn't really what was happening.

"Tony!"  He was standing on the edge of the roof, peering over to look at the ground.  "What are you doing?"

He looks over his shoulder at her and smiles, but doesn't move.  "It's beautiful, isn't it?"  And it was pretty, with him silhouetted against the sunrise, and if he fell now that would be burned into his eyes forever, and Pepper really didn't think he would do that to her, to Stane, to the company, but she'd been with him long enough to know that he doesn't always think things through.  Sometimes he just does.

"You're going to fall!"  She was panicking, thinking about calling 911, about whether she should call Stane or Rhodey first ( _who would be more useful, the friend or the company_ ), about the PR control, about the hospital and the medicine and how many extra hours she would have to put into this, about how sad she would be if he died, about how they haven't known each other that long but it would kill her.

It would kill her.

This isn't her job, but he is her friend, and Pepper doesn't want to go looking for a new one, so she runs up behind him and grabs him by the back of that expensive dress shirt, pulling him down to the ground on top of her.

"Ow."  He rolls off of her and looks over, reproachful.  "What was that for?"

He wasn't going to jump.  That became clear in the way he looked over at her, the surprise in his eyes, so now Pepper was mostly pissed instead of worried.  She wasn't thinking about losing him anymore, she was thinking about the skin that had gotten torn off her elbow and how her skirt was ripped and the fact that she broke a heel.

"God, Tony."  She got up painfully, and Tony just stared at her.  "You have to be at the office by nine.  I'm going home."

 

 

 

"Have you ever thought about going to a doctor?"

It was a good night.  Stark Industries had just closed the deal on something important, and Tony had finally gotten one of his non-profit projects to go through, something about increasing the water supply in third world countries.  Stane and some other work people had been here to celebrate, and Alice had stopped in, even though Tony had said that he wasn't going to see her again.  

Now it was just the two of them, her curled up on the couch and Tony over at the bar, mixing what he calls his specialty drinks.

He's looking at her over the top of his glass.  "What for?"

_Because you were standing on the top of the roof the other day and you do shit just to make yourself feel like you can breath again, because you drink to much and screw every girl in your sights but me and I know you don't sleep, because you either eat too much or too little and one day this is all going to catch up with you, so please, Tony, just go talk to someone._

But she didn't say that.  He knew that's what she was getting at, because she's been here long enough to know all his quirks and hang ups.  That was the real reason he had turned every other assistant away: he didn't want them to know he couldn't be handed things, he didn't want them to see what the great Tony Stark really is.  Just a man, but a very impressive one, and suddenly the words died in Pepper's throat.

"For your liver."  She says instead, turning back to the tv.  "Got to be dead by now."

 

 

 

Tony unscrews the lid on the bottle, pops one pill in his mouth and swallows it dry.

Stane had come over and slapped it into his hand the other day, winking and saying that it was  _something to help him sleep, so that big brain of yours can work right._ It seems that Tony was reaching out, just not to Pepper.  

She wouldn't have minded that, except for the fact that Stane's idea of help seemed to have been just getting a prescription for sleeping pills and calling it a day.  At least, she hopes it's sleeping bills.  Tony won't let her see them.

Pepper's waiting back in her office, where she can see Tony but he can't see her.  She's afraid that he might not take them if he knows she's there, but as she watches, he stares down at the bottle in his hand, then tips two more in his hand, swallowing them before she can even begin to consider how bad of a sign that was.

But she doesn't say anything.

He wouldn't listen anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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